This made me want to say something about reading poetry aloud.
Until a few years ago I'd never really done it.
And now I've started I don't want to stop.
Not ever.
I started with The Prelude in a quartet,
Taking turns at arbitrary intervals.
And then c got me reading Keats, Pound, Eliot, all sorts
Out loud. The night we first kissed was prefaced by a drunken recital by me of my favourites.
And an exuberant gesture that claimed the life of a candle.
And a tablecloth.
How did we lose sight or hearing of the poem as a HEARD thing
Rather than a READ thing? It'll take
More
Than Benjamin Zephaniah to sort this one out I fear.


I think that 'I like the sound of it' is possibly the best recommendation for a poem I know. If I like the way that a poem feels then I'll find out what it means. I enjoyed the Lindsay t-p, so thanks for posting it. I don't know a lot of his poetry but what I have read has endeared itself to me.

I should really post something about the Kinsella that I was reading on the train yesterday but I'm finding it difficult to order my thoughts. I'll have to go back and decide which of his poems I like (a handful) and why. And then the book has to go in the post back to c.

Khodasevich, the poem is called About myself

No, I didn’t lost the beauty, but in whole,           
I’m put to shame to see it by my eyes,
By eyes of men – else more, for my soul
Will not agree with their offensive prize.

And so I live, hiding my heart, divine,
Into the breast of a low, nasty rebel …
D’ you see a spider on the green blade, fine,
And on its back – the cruciform black label?

A little child will run away from it,
And in a heist, you ever try to hit –
By squeamish hands – it off your neck of fairy.

It runs away of your unbound wrath,
Ashamed and known not what means the cross,
It always bears on his back so hairy. 


Before the mirror


‘I, I, I’. What a word! It’s unfair!
Is this man I? Is this not a fake?
Could his mother love him anywhere –
Grayish-yellow, gray in his hair,
And such witty and wise as a snake?

Can it be that the boy who liked dances
In the summer Ostankino’s balls --
Is I? I who, by each of my answers,
Call for anger’s and fear’s upraises
Of the poets, beginning their toils.

Can it be that the same youthful person
Who put vigor in his arguments –
Is I? I, who, at tragic and passion’s
Elements, met in all conversations,
Has learnt usage of silence or jests.   

Yet it’s always when you just freeze on
The midways through your baleful life:
>From the trivial reasons to reasons,
And behold, you are lost in wild regions,
And couldn’t find former trace of your strife.   

Under garrets of France, not a fear
Of a panther has set me, at last.
Virgil does not inspire me here…
There is loneliness – framed in the mirror
That is speaking the truth of the glass.

Another Betjeman I can recit by heart.

Indeed, not only is poetry only to be appreciated when read out loud, I feel I only appreciate it when I can recit it by heart.

I'm going a bit ballistic with three long-ish poems tonight. I'm just in one of those moods. There's nothing really to connect them other than they're in the same anthology (believe it or not, The Nation's Favourite Twentieth Century Poems) and they all have something connected with anger in my own mind. Sharing poetry validates it more for me than the reading of it aloud or from heart. Often reading aloud is sharing (I find it strange to think of reciting poetry to myself) but when I read a poem I like, or that has moved me, I want to share it with others.

Without you

Without you every morning would feel like going back to work after a holiday,
Without you I couldn't stand the smell of the East Lancs Road,
Without you ghost ferries would cross the Mersey manned by skeleton crews,
Without you I'd probably feel happy and have more money and time and nothing to do with it,
Without you I'd have to leave my stillborn poems on other people's doorsteps, wrapped in brown paper,
Without you there'd never be sauce to put on sausage butties,
Without you plastic flowers in shop windows would just be plastic flowers in shop windows,
Without you I'd spend my summers picking morosley over the remains of train crashes,
Without you white birds would wrench themselves free from my paintings and fly off dripping blood into the night,
Without you green apples wouldn't taste greener,
Without you Mothers wouldn't let their children play out after tea,
Without you every musician in the world would forget how to play the blues,
Without you Public Houses would be public again,
Without you the Sunday Times colour suppliment would come out in black-and-white,
Without you indifferent colonels would shrug their shoulders and press the button,
Without you they's stop changing the flowers in Piccadilly Gardens,
Without you Clark Kent would forget how to become Superman,
Without you Sunshine Breakfast would only consist of Cornflakes,
Without you there'd be no colour in Magic colouring books,
Without you Mahler's 8th would only be performed by street musicians in derelict houses,
Without you they'd forget to put the salt in every packet of crisps,
Without you it would be an offence punishable by a fine of up to £200 or two months' imprisonment to be found in possession of curry powder,
Without you riot police are massing in quiet sidestreets,
Without you all streets would be one-way the other way,
Without you there'd be no one to kiss goodnight when we quarrel,
Without you the first martian to land would turn round and go away again,
Without you they'd forget to change the weather,
Without you blind men would sell unlucky heather,
Without you there would be
no landscapes/no stations/no houses
no chipshops/no quiet villages/no seagulls
on beaches/no hopscotch on pavements/no night/no morning/
there'd be no city no country
Without you.

Adrian Henri

And of course this last one makes me sad too.

hh

"Without you there'd never be sauce to put on sausage butties"

Excuse moi, us foodies shudder at the very thought of it

xx

HH - I love Frank O'Hara. How about:

Poem (Lana Turner has collapsed!)

Lana Turner has collapsed!
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
but hailing hits you on the head
hard so it was really snowing and
raining and I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the traffic
was acting exactly like the sky
and suddenly I see a headline
LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!
there is no snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California
I have been to lots of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful
but I never actually collapsed
oh Lana Turner we love you get up


Or:

Steps

How funny you are today New York
like Ginger Rogers in Swingtime
and St. Bridget's steeple leaning a little to the left

here I have just jumped out of a bed full of V-days
(I got tire of D-days) and blue you there still
accepts me foolish and free
all I want is a room up there
and you in it
and even ht etraffic halt so thick is a way
for people to rub up against each other
and when their surgical appliances lock
they stay together
for the rest of the day (what a day)
I go by to check a slide and I say
that painting's not so blue

where's Lana Turner
she's out eating
and Garbo's backstage at the Met
everyone's taking their coat off
so they can show a rib-cage to the rib-watchers
and the park's full of dancers with their tights and shoes
in little bags
who are often mistaken for worker-outers at the West Side Y
why not
the Pittsburgh Pirates shout because they won
and in a sense we're all winning
we're alive

the apartment was vacated by a gay couple
who moved to the country for fun
they moved a day too soon
even the stabbings are helping the population explosion
though in the wrong country
and all those liars have left the UN
the Seagram Building's no longer rivalled in interest
not that we need liquor (we just like it)

and the little box is out on the sidewalk
next to the delicatessen
so the old man can sit on it and drink beer
and get knocked off it by his wife later in the day
while the sun is still shining

oh god it's wonderful
to get out of bed
and drink too much coffee
and smoke too many cigarettes
and love you so much

I got the poem from this site http://lyrics.russian-women.net/

For some reason there is no names of poets. Is it possible.

There are several poems that I liked there. 

Yes, you are right. I did not read the first page.

Still it is strange that they don't mention the author.

Russian pop music is influenced by Western music very much. They know the best UK and American bands. My friends bring self-made videos from three days festival of pop music every summer. They think that it is such a special event that we with t-p have to listen to that. I am mildly curious, but I get tired of it quickly.

It is a mixture of popular Western trends dressed in some Russian ways. For me it is strange to watch, even funny sometimes. My friends listen to the Russian pop (called popsa with stress on the a) all the time. There are some influence from continental groups (French or Mediteranian groups) and there are more traditional Russian songs. Perhaps they are getting a little better as far as the sound is concerned. 

You probably would enjoy watching it, hh.

Is there anything original on that site? It says that they invite original poems.